Author: Courjaud, A.
Paper Title Page
TUPSO88 New Concept for the SwissFEL Gun Laser 442
 
  • A. Trisorio, M.C. Divall, C.P. Hauri, C. Vicario
    PSI, Villigen PSI, Switzerland
  • A. Courjaud
    Amplitude Systemes, Pessac, France
 
  The operation of Swiss FEL put very stringent constrains on the gun laser system. First the parameters, such as energy stability, timing jitter, double pulse operation, temporal and spatial pulse shape of the ultra-violet laser pulses used to generate the photo-electrons are challenging even for the state of the art laser technologies. Second, the laser system must be extremely stable, reliable and its maintenance cost as low as possible. In this perspective, we prospected for alternative technologies to the well known, commonly used but costly Ti:sapphire laser systems. We show that a hybrid Yb fiber and solid state Yb:CaF2 amplifier system can be a very interesting approach. This gain medium allows the production of sub-500 fs, high fidelity, high stability, high energy pulses in the ultra-violet with low timing jitter. The system profits of the mature, stable direct diode pumping technology and optimized design. It delivers the two high-energy, shaped UV pulses separated by 28 ns to produce the photo-electrons, a short IR probe (<100 fs FWHM) to temporally characterize those pulses and the two stretched IR pulses ( 50 ps FWHM) necessary for the laser heater.